I have started gathering statistics for the White Paper I am drafting, and am learning quite a bit. The Center For Neighborhood Technologies published a report on the burdens of housing and transportation and working families. In phoenix specifically they found that working families spend 57% of their income on housing and transportation. The Center For Neighborhood Technologies said that to be considered affordable, families should spend no more than 45% of their income on transportation and housing. They also have a Housing And Transportation Affordability Index that you can view and if you look in the Phoenix Metro Area Specifically you will see that the factor of affordability gets smaller in the region when transportation is considered. Too add to the mess many working families spend about 30% of their income on transportation, more than they spend on housing which is 27%.
Currently Illinois is looking at adopting the Housing and Transportation Index as a planning tool and as a criterion in the allocation of funding for transit, highways, economic development, and housing projects. It is in the State Senate and if passed in Illinois will be the first type of legislation that goes beyond including just housing as an affordability factor. It is important for the City of Phoenix I feel to adopt such policies as well if we are going to remain a competitive, economical, sustainable, and attractive city. It is the way the future is moving and since HUD announced its Partnership with DOT and EPA, if we want future funding we will have to be able to be able to and implement and be effective in such policies.
If you are Interested in the report or viewing the index you can click on the following link:
http://www.cnt.org/repository/heavy_load_10_06.pdf
Once again, great work. I think what you are doing is so important to changing how we view our cities. For too long we have lived by the myth of affordable sprawl housing. We need cities that have a viable public transportation option, that will never happen if we keep pushing out instead of up.
ReplyDeletePhoenix will always have a problem with public transportation. People like urban sprawl and it will continue as long as builders and cities are making money doing it. Phoenix is a unique situation because it exploded in population growth to rapidly.
ReplyDeleteI agree i think there will have to be some kind of drastic changes to improve public transportation. Because Phoenix is the foster child of urban sprawl and until the inner city can compete in low cost housing like anthem and surprise we will still see this problem.
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